Breast cancer diagnosis from mammographic images using optimized feature selection and neural network architecture

Abstract

AbstractBreast cancer is one of the deadly diseases in women that have raised the mortality rate of women. An accurate and early detection of breast cancer using mammogram images is still a complex task. Hence, this article proposes a novel breast cancer detection model, which included five major phases: (a) preprocessing, (b) segmentation, (c) feature extraction, (d) feature selection, and (e) classification. The input mammogram image is initially preprocessed using contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) and median filtering. The preprocessed image is then subjected to segmentation via the region growing algorithm. Subsequently, geometric features, texture features and gradient features are extracted from the segmented image. Since the length of the feature vector is large, it is essential to select the optimal features. Here, the selection of optimal features is done by a hybrid optimization algorithm. Once the optimal features are selected, they are subjected to the classification process involving the neural network (NN) classifier. As a novelty, the weight of NN is selected optimally to enhance the accuracy of diagnosis (benign and malignant). The optimal feature selection as well as the weight optimization of NN is accomplished by merging the Lion algorithm (LA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO), named as velocity updated lion algorithm (VU‐LA). Finally, a performance‐based evaluation is carried out between VU‐LA and the existing models like, whale optimization algorithm (WOA), gray wolf optimization (GWO), firefly (FF), PSO, and LA.